Posted by Lale on 10/2/2009, 12:13:30, in reply to "Re: jude the obscure"
72.138.111.169
Here it is.
Lale
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Posted by Steven on 19/1/2007, 13:12:13
Hardy gave fictional names to real places in his novels. There are several maps available online showing the locations in his novels, but I haven't found any as comprehensive as the one in the Oxford World's Classics editions. I've scanned one of them and highlighted the locations featured in Jude the Obscure. {http://www.readliterature.com/stamps/images/Jude%20Locations.gif --- see below - LE}
Here are the corresponding real names:
Christminster is Oxford
Alfredston is Wantage
Marygreen is Eawley Magna
Kennetbridge is Newbury
Aldbrickham is Reading
Melchester is Salisbury
Shaston is Shaftsbury
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Posted by Rizwan on 19/1/2007, 13:36:06, in reply to "Map for Jude the Obscure"
Thanks Steven. This is definitely helpful for me.
Not sure how others feel about this, but I actually wish Hardy had just used the real names for places, especially since they are so thinly disguised in the first place. I'm not sure that these fictional names really add anything to the story--or maybe there's some larger point I'm missing? I mean, I see Faulkner's point in renaming things in his psuedo-fictional Yoknapatawpha County, and Garcia-Marquez did the same thing in his psuedo-fictional Macando (both, I think, did this in part to place emphasis on the universal themes in their work), but I'm not sure Hardy had this same goal in mind. Again, I could be wrong...
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Posted by Steven on 19/1/2007, 22:39:14, in reply to "Re: Map for Jude the Obscure"
--Previous Message--
: Not sure how others feel about this, but I actually
: wish Hardy had just used the real names for places,
: especially since they are so thinly disguised in the
: first place. I'm not sure that these fictional names
: really add anything to the story--or maybe there's
: some larger point I'm missing?
Yes, I agree that real names would have been just as effective. Anonymity in various forms seems to have been fashionable in 19th century novels, and maybe that's the chief explanation. Many authors used pseudonyms. Dostoevsky begins C&P with a reference to "K--- bridge." Poe even has anonymous fictional characters such as "G---".
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Posted by LadyPurple on 20/1/2007, 7:03:33, in reply to "Re: Map for Jude the Obscure"
I am not sure whether real place names would have been an option for Hardy at the time. With hindsight we might see it this way.
I found the following speech by him that sheds some light on his use of fictional names:
In 1910 Hardy was awarded the freedom of the Borough of Dorchester. In the speech he delivered on that occasion he explained:
I may be allowed to confess that the freedom of the Borough of Dorchester did seem to me at first something I had possessed a long while, ... for when I consider the liberties I have taken with its ancient walls, streets, and precincts through the medium of the printing-press, I feel that I have treated its external features with the hand of freedom indeed. True, it might be urged that my Casterbridge (if I may mention seriously a name coined off-hand in a moment with no thought of its becoming established and localized) is not Dorchester--not even the Dorchester that existed 60 years ago, but a dream-place that never was outside an irresponsible book. Nevertheless, when somebody said to me that 'Casterbridge' is a sort of essence of the town as it used to be, 'a place more Dorchester than Dorchester itself', I could not absolutely contradict him, though I could not quite perceive it. At any rate, it is not a photograph in words, that inartistic species of literary produce, particularly in respect to personages. ... The chronicle of the town has vivid marks on it. Not to go back to events of National importance, lurid scenes have been enacted here within living memory, or not so many years beyond it ... . Then, if one were to recount the election excitements, Free Trade riots, scenes of soldiers marching down the town to war, the proclamation of Sovereigns now crumbled to dust, it would be an interesting local story. (1)
Endnotes:
(1) Hardy, Thomas. The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy. Edited by Michael Millgate. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984. 379.
There are other interesting bits of information on the site, in particular relating to the maps.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~bp10/wessex/fictional_concept/freedom.shtml
Friederike
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Posted by LadyPurple on 20/1/2007, 7:05:38, in reply to "Re: Map for Jude the Obscure"
Actually, I was just reading the introductory article on the site mentioned in my previous message.
Interesting reading about the evolution of "Wessex"
Friederike
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Posted by Rizwan on 22/1/2007, 10:19:24, in reply to "Re: Map for Jude the Obscure"
Awesome info. Of course a Read Lit contributor would provide the answer. Thanks Friederike!
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